Working on a Miracle
Books / Hardcover
Books › Biography & Autobiography › Medical (incl. Patients)
ISBN: 0553105191 / Publisher: Bantam, January 1997
A physician describes how he went from surgeon to patient when a slip of a scalpel during an autopsy led to HIV infection and offers an intensely personal account of his fierce battle with the AIDS virus. 150,000 first printing.
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Dr. Mahlon Johnson had devoted his life to neuropathology, the detailed laboratory investigation of nervous system diseases. During a routine brain autopsy of an AIDS victim, suddenly, with one slip of the scalpel, he went from doctor to patient, a patient battling for his life against HIV. Ever the researcher, he began to chronicle his illness, charting his blood counts constantly to track the course of his infection. Within a year it appeared he was a "rapid progressor," one of the unlucky minority who swiftly advance toward AIDS.Now, in a race against time, Johnson began searching for treatments, ferreting out every new study that could offer hope. Guided by the discoveries of the top AIDS researchers in the country, he made himself a guinea pig, like Louis Pasteur, experimenting with an aggressive treatment regimen combining different kinds of drugs - the few antivirals available at the time and the immune-system-boosting, but potentially toxic cancer treatment IL-2.Soon - amazingly - his blood counts, which had plummeted unnervingly to around 300, soared above 1000, to the high normal range; and HIV could no longer be isolated in his blood even by the most sensitive tests. Unsure how to interpret these unusual findings, he kept fighting, adding protease inhibitors to his regime as soon as they became available. And now, four and a half years after his infection with HIV, his blood remains free of any detectable virus. He is living proof of what many researchers have come to believe - that HIV may no longer be an inevitable death sentence.
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